I'm a journalist. I should be well used to deadlines by now, I get them nearly everyday in college. But I'm terrified of them and I worry about them all the time, as soon as O get one, I panic and wonder if I'm ever going to make it.I always do, well within time limits. Always. Nothing to worry about.
But I'm a natural worrier and I worry about everything. When I'm not worrying, I get worried that there's nothing to worry about and wonder why not. Is this normal??
When I think about it though, and I'd imagine I'm not alone in this, is, what IS normal? There's actually no such thing really. Yeah, sure, there's normal for me, normal for you and normal for every Tom, Dick and Harry on the planet, but that's hugely different. Like, it could be normal for me to eat eight biscuits at a time, and that could be alien to someone else. It can be normal for me to wake up at seven a.m. but alien to someone else. Et cetera.
Deadlines... were was I? Oh yeah, ok, so I was talking about getting used to deadlines and making them. The point is, I've made myself a deadline. This semester has been made a lot harder for me by the fact that I rush home every day to binge and purge, and stay up late sometimes to binge and end up too tired to get up in the morning for college. I've really made things a lot more difficult for myself, and a lot less of an enjoyable experience. I feel left out all the time, because I always rush off to exercise and stuff like that. All my spare time is exercise. And I miss out on social life side of things because I'm too focused on food and being at home to have my food and my binges.
SO, my deadline, is that by the end of the summer I will stop bingeing. Then I will have the most awesome time in college for second year, and I'll be able to enjoy things so much more. Can't wait. Well, clearly, I can wait... but that's not the point, the point is I'll be better in second year and everything will be better.
The hypnotherapy tape I listen to is brilliant. I listen to it every day now, and it's fast becoming my favourite time of day, I actually look forward to it more than I look forward to The Binge. The tape is a recording of the hypnotherapy session I had from 26th July 2013, and that's nearly two years and I'm STILL bloody bingeing. The time has really come to stop it now. Come on Pippa. This is getting ridiculous. But the point is, I listen to my tape everyday and that automatically makes the day non - zero. (Yeah, I'm obsessed with making days in to non - zero ones, I feel terrible if I don't do it) I've never actually heard the end of it, because it sends me to sleep, or at least, in to a trance where my conscious mind is under hypnosis.
Hypnosis is very powerful. This particular tape it about guilt and sexual shame. This makes it the most powerful tape of the three that I have, because that's where my problems lie, and the reasons why I am the way I am. Joe, the therapist, said that if anything was going to get me better it was that CD. So I listen to it every day, without fail. I really do want to get over this.
In the tape, he says when I have thoughts about bingeing, I am to see a stop sign, and say STOP, stop, stop, stop, stop. 5 times. And then I am so ASSOCIATE myself in to my body by breathing and "coming in to the here and now" and being in the moment, and looking "outwards from yourself to what you sense around you". And now, the second I catch myself thinking about food, I say my stops and I breathe and I try to think about nicer things, namely Kegan, or college, or other stuff.
I've noticed that a huge part of my day is disassociating, in a different trance, by exercising. I'm barely there when I'm exercising. So many people wave at me and stuff when I'm walking along, and I get in to trouble for not waving back, but I'm in a different zone when I'm walking. And as for the gym, that's all calorie counting and counting. I don't think about anything when I'm at the gym, just about the exercise (mainly how many seconds left before I can stop the torture...).
I want to end on a positive note. I'm sick, yes, and I really want to get better. I think things are getting better, because I don't look forward to binges any more, I just get it out of the way and go look forward to 'sleepy tape time' which is what I call it. That's what I look forward to most in my day, rather than feeling like I have to do it and trying to struggle to get through it so I can get up and binge again. I don't feel like that any more, I look forward to it, and I don't want to get up again and binge. I want to stay safe in bed.
Bed did not used to feel like a safe place. It does now. I love being in bed with my lovely electric blanket and warm and safe with my tape. The kitchen is not a happy place. It is not safe. I really do believe that things are improving. Not because I'm bingenig any less, but because my mindset has altered. It's different somehow in the last few weeks. I feel better, and I do feel like I am going to have beaten this by the end of the summer. I can do this, I will do this.
